Onidus 4
For several breaths, I linger in the comfort of the warm ground. I am so very tired.
Shouts break up the beautiful silence in my mind. I blink and strain to look.
Iryssius charges toward the Nebs, firing flaming orbs from his hands with rapid bursts, taking down Nebs left and right. Ulian appears through the mirage, tag-teaming with him, shielding the queen and other shifters as they hurry across the ground into a landing ship.
A familiar young face scrambles into view. He’s scared and talks to someone else behind me.
“Ori…” I want to tell our youngest squad member it’s okay. I’m fine. But I can’t speak. And I can’t understand what he’s doing here. He’s supposed to be on Caligno with the other Isonian forces, fighting Nebs who are trying to take their females for a new breed of Myndrous.
I’m hallucinating.
“Ulian! He’s a fucking cinder! No afterburn!” Oriclen shouts with so much force that veins rise in his neck.
Just let me sleep.
Someone rolls me over. I stare up at the sky, my body numb, savoring the lack of pain and the emptiness of care and concern. Only a faint awareness of pressure in my body reminds me that it’s still attached.
The ground disappears. The stars move, and I fear they’re leaving me behind. I always wanted to die, staring up at the universe, not a ship. But I never get what I want.
Ulian’s face appears over mine as the roof of a ship blocks my view. He reaches for my mask. I don’t know how, but I manage to get a smoking hand over his.
No.
He frowns at me. “Deal with it.”
Ulian unclips it from my neck augments, exposing my scarred face.
Sickening chills curl through my stomach.
I try to turn away from Oriclen because I never wanted the young Torrent to see what becomes of us as we endure constant battle.
I can’t hold my aural mask any longer. I don’t have the energy.
Oriclen sees, and he tears his gold eyes away from me.
A sharp pain in my chest forces my eyes open. Ulian looks down at me and speaks to others in the room. Hoses and radiant tubes of fluids swing over my head. The room lurches. We’re leaving the Roscazkan world.
I grab the only hand I can focus on. Ember Elsion peers down at me, taking Oriclen’s place. He holds a dermal repair patch to my side. Dark flecks, like tiny bits of charcoal, coat my body and climb my arm.
“Hang in there, sir,” Elsion says before turning to Ulian. “Take some of mine!”
“I can’t take Luminescence from Embers or Torrents,” Ulian snaps.
“He’s going to fucking die!” Elsion shouts in rage.
A mask filled with golden fog settles over my nose and mouth. I pat Elsion’s arm.
He looks down at me.
“Que…” I rasp and choke on my dry throat, coughing out ash.
Machines beep frantically around me in a chaotic storm I can’t process. My head swims in a sea of light, and blurry gray lines like the room is filled with smoke.
Ulian catches a booster cylinder from someone else in the medbay. He spins it in a palm, slaps it into the injector, and repositions beside my head. He comes closer and pats my face as I drift off again. “You’re not dying on me today.”
“Queen…” I cough again.
“I need the nebulizer booster too,” Ulian calls out.
Ramage’s stocky frame leans over Elsion’s shoulder. “She’s injured but alive and free, Onidus.”
Devrus joins him. “We are in your debt.”
“Debt…paid. I want…” I inhale the sweet mist. “Nothing from you. Just…rebuild.”
“You too,” Devrus replies.
“Ignus?” I wheeze.
The nebulizer pours more light-filled mist into my mask as Ulian removes my shattered chest armor. “He’s in the other medbay with Ryz and Kassian. He’ll be fine.”
Ulian settles the injector over my core. “Deep breath.”
I drag my eyes to him and ignore his request.
He licks a lip and looks away. “Fucking hell, Onidus. You really torched yourself this time. You really do have a death wish.”
He knows I do. All Smoldren do after a couple of years. It’s how we cope with the likelihood every mission will be our last.
Ulian glances at someone sitting in the room. “Oriclen needs you more than you know.”
“You don’t,” I mutter behind my nebulizer mask. “Don’t do that…to me.” My core aches with the desire to stop cycling. My heart is weary, and my soul begs to finally know silence.
“Fine.” Ulian depresses the injector, sending massive waves of agony through my core. My body goes rigid on the bed from the shock.
“I told you to take a deep breath,” he snorts.
The radiant fluid disappears into my core. I feel its heat. But it won’t be enough unless I fight like hell to cling to it.
I fight and almost die and heal and fight. There is no end.
I want it to end.
Ulian sets a hand on my forehead.
“Don’t you…dare…” I jerk away from his touch.
“I need to see what’s wrong!” Ulian replies.
“Stay out…of my head…Ulian!”
“You’re going to turn to ash!”
I can’t take it anymore. My mask muffles my pathetic shout, making it sound far weaker than I wish it did. “Then…let me!”
A radiant presence enters the medbay with a power I know well. Ulian releases me.
I tilt my head and look up, not at a Seraphim come to carry me to Echelon, but at gold eyes, dark blue marbled fur, and scars proudly displayed on an armored body.
Azrim, the alpha of Pack Aegeris, Commander of his new fleet, looks down at me. He has endured loss and battle and heartbreak similar to my own. “Your soul is dark from pain you carry like a punishment you think you deserve from a trauma that wasn’t your fault.”
I stare up at him. “Put me down…fast. Please.”
He lost his first mate when he went to fight for his planet and Alpha Prime, the Thorians’ homeworld, just over two years ago.
“I want it…to be over.”
He nods. “I know. But you are not done, simply…lost, my friend. A comet in the sky, searching for where to land.” Azrim closes his eyes as the ship dims. In his hands, he forms an orb of light. “A gift from my vessel to yours for protecting Tessi of Earth.”
He settles the orb over my bloodied chest, above my faintly pulsing core. “You saved our mate, and now the Aegeris pack is two souls bigger with a third on the way.”
The orb sinks into me, melting like butter, and spreading light and warmth back into my body. The heat doesn’t let up. It surges through my bones and lights my nerves on fire. My skin brightens until a flame licks off of my chest.
“Finally.” Ulian slumps back and wipes a hand down his face. “Afterburn ignited.”
Elsion hangs his head, as if all his effort was focused on keeping me alive, and he can finally rest.
I will heal.
I’m not sure I want to. All it means is more battles in my future.
Azrim opens his eyes, looks down at me, and rests a hand on my shoulder. After a nod, he steps back and returns to his command deck on an upper level.
The Circidians have blessed the Aegeris pack. Our people come from a similar origin, though we are vastly different from the wild Shifters in more ways than claws and teeth.
Elsion studies me like he wishes something were different.
“Speak your mind, Ember,” I say through my fogged mask.
He works his mouth around then looks away at nothing in particular. He carries a standard yellow-gold light, has a small scar on his nose, and is one of the few Embers who can stomach blood. “I thought we got here too late.”
“You aren’t supposed to be here at all,” I remind him.
“Oriclen felt it in transit. Kept pacing and clutching his head, shouting that we weren’t going to be fast enough. Our pilot punched it, maxed the throttle until we nearly burned up the ship.”
“Are the Caligno back home, free of Nebs?”
“Yes.” Elsion still holds the patch over my chest. Ulian frees another one from packaging and presses it to my puncture from the torn dash. Elsion holds it in place with his other hand while Ulian moves down my body. “You’re so badly torched. How will this heal?”
“Slowly,” Ulian says. “He’s going to be out of commission for months.”
In my compromised state, my mind slips. I don’t know why they care to keep me around, to fight to save my tattered vessel.
Oriclen gets up and storms off. He is an anomaly among Torrents, with a mind capable of far more than most Isonians. I realize my mistake a moment too late.
Elsion glances back and sighs. “Why didn’t they send us together? Why just…”
“The Smoldren?” Ulian asks.
Elsion nods.
“Threat level,” I tell him. “Distance from Lumen Command.”
Ulian slides his chair along the guide rail up to my side again. “Now, are you going to tell me what the fuck is going on with you? Or am I going to have to draw it out?”
Oriclen clearly knows.
I touch a scar on my side and manifest an aural mask of apathy.
Ulian runs a hand down his face. “Old injuries…”
He motions for everyone to leave. Elsion refuses.
“Go on, kid.” I nod toward the door. “You don’t need to be here for this. Go get some food and rest.”
Elsion gets up then stops. “Why do you Smoldren always do this? Push until you’re almost dead?”
Ulian slumps. He’s scratched up and has a fresh burn mark on the chest of his armor.
I can see it clearer with every passing minute.
“Because it’s our job, and it will be yours one day.
You will stand in our place, the space between life and death, where the Myndrous and Nebs and Denarso cling to life by stealing it from others. ”
I catch Elsion’s wrist as he turns to leave. “Because we don’t want you to endure this until we have held the line as long as we can. It is not an easy job. And we hope that you can know peace instead of being forced to endure this.”
Iryssius, Ryz, who has been working on Ignus in another bay, leans in the doorway. He’s similarly scorched to Ulian with a blood stain on his mask that’s drained from a bruising split above his eye. It’s smeared his dark brown hair into a chaotic array of spikes.
Ryz wipes his hands on a rag. “Why don’t you and Ember Kassian take a break?”
Elsion waits for our other Ember to join him from the bay where Ryz has been working on Ignus, and they walk off together.